Pentecost 2, Year C, 2001

St Augustine's, Asbury Park, NJ

Readings: 2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Luke 7:36-50

Today
is the first week
back in what the church has traditionally called "ordinary time" - the quiet times "in between" the great feasts and fasts of the church year. We've faced Christ's death
and proclaimed the resurrection,
we've welcomed the fire
of the Holy Spirit
and celebrated the Trinity.
But now it's back to ordinary time,
those long weeks of green between Trinity and Advent,
back to ordinary life.
We go from resurrection stories and passion narratives
back to gospel readings
about the life of Jesus,
from the Acts of the early church
to the great stories
of the Old Testament.

Which is how we suddenly find ourselves
in the middle
of the story of David.
It's a sordid story, at this point,
and after the high points of our recent celebrations
it hits us
with an emotional
thud.
And it's a difficult story,
not least
because I am a visitor
among you.

This is
an ugly,
scandalous tale.
No young David, standing up to the giant,
no little David, playing on his harp,
but a full grown
powerful
king,
up to his neck in lust
and murder
and death.

It's a story which has particular resonance
this week, because murder
and justice
have been very much
on our minds.
On Monday
Timothy McVeigh
was executed,
and our TV screens were flooded
with stories
of perpetrator
and victims.
On Tuesday
Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali was sentenced to life in prison
for his part
in the bombing of the American Embassy
in Kenya.
And it's little more than a week
since Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal
fired an automatic gun
into a family gathering,
and killed both his parents, seven other relatives,
and finally
himself.

Sin and punishment,
guilt and retribution,
justice,
divine or otherwise
have been household words this week,
and our readings today
only add to the debate.
Whether we are for
or against
the death penalty,
we cannot avoid
the question
of how we deal with evil
among us.

The story of David
is a sobering one. Today
we come in
half way through.
But if you know your Sunday School stories,
David
was one of the heroes.
God chose him
as a little boy,
gave him talents and wealth and power.
From shepherd boy
to the nation's king,
David's story
is the stuff of fairy tales.
And all was going well, until one day,
looking out of his window, he saw Bathsheba.
The beautiful wife of Uriah,
one of his army captains.
And David wanted her.
Power had gone to his head. Like a spoiled child
reaching out for candy,
David reached out
and took
Bathsheba.
He probably rationalized it
as just a small thing,
a minor infraction
of God's law, just this once,
an appreciation of her beauty,
but from appreciation
came adultery,
and from adultery,
came an unwanted pregnancy,
and from that pregnancy, conspiracy,
and from conspiracy,
murder.

"When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made
lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought
her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son."

And that might
have been the end
of the story. All's well that ends well,
except for poor dead Uriah,
the king is all powerful
and the king
has acted.
The end.

Except
for the prophet Nathan. Nathan
took his life
into his hands,
Nathan the prophet
heard the word of God,
and carried that word
to David.
"King David", he said,
"King David,
you are a wise ruler.
I've heard a story
which troubles me greatly. Tell me
what you would do."
and he told him the story
we heard read today, a story
about a poor man
who had only one little lamb, which he cared or
like a child,
and a rich man
needing to feed a sudden guest,
who went right past his own flocks
and took that precious little lamb
for dinner."

David
was outraged. He'd been a shepherd. He knew
what a lamb could mean
to a struggling
farmer.
"That man
deserves
to die."

And as soon
as the words
left his lips,
he knew. The words Nathan spoke
we just echoes
of the words
in his mind.
"You are that man...
I am that man...I deserve
to die."

David
the King, anointed, blessed,
by law and by conscience, David
deserved
to die.
That
would be justice.
Because David,
beloved of God,
had sinned.

One of the things
which has plagued me this week
is our human propensity
to name evil
as "out there" somewhere,
as if it had nothing to do with us.
It's so easy
to demonize,
to cast blame,
to imagine ourselves as innocent,
or at least
not as guilty
as someone else.

Yet Timothy McVeigh
was someone's son.
He was someone's
childhood playmate,
someone's army buddy,
someone's hometown friend.
He was just
another
American
kid.

Any
of us
can be caught up
into the web of evil,
any of us
can be caught up into sin.
For King David, it began
with something so small
that he probably didn't even think twice.

Because that's the problem. Evil
is among us.
It's not just something out there,
lurking in the shadows
but pretty much
at a distance.
It's right here beside us,
potentially right here within us,
when we take one wrong turn,
one bad decision.
And its tentacles reach out
into our lives.

It's part of being human,
part of living in a world
which has been marred by sin,
a world in which God,
by God's grace
has left us
with the freedom
of our own decisions
and their consequences.
And if that were the end of the story
then we would be doomed.
Doomed to struggle forever
in the webs woven
of decision.
Some webs
woven ourselves,
and some
by our forebears,
our governments
our families.

But that
is not the end
of the story.
David
the king
stands before Nathan
the prophet.
"I am that man. I have sinned. I deserve
to die."
Simple, costly words. An admission of guilt.
And David
had every right
to expect
to be struck down dead.

But he was not.
Nathan the prophet said
"The Lord has put away your sin. You shall not die. Nevertheless
because by this deed
you have utterly scorned the Lord
the child that is born to you
shall die."
These are not easy words for us to hear.
God is merciful
to David,
but his newborn son pays the price
for his sin,
the innocent child
born of David and Bathsheba's
sinful act.
It's a troubling picture of God we have here,
but it is a picture
which belongs to its time. A child
was not much more
than a possession;
there are consequences
of sin.
And sometimes
sin hurts
the innocent.

But the point of this encounter
is that God is merciful.
We cannot just escape the consequences of sin,
but God is merciful.
Instead of death
David receives life,
instead of condemnation
he receives forgiveness.
And life
begins again.
Life begins again.

These last few days
I've had the privilege of reading
some reflections written by one of the people
seriously injured
in the Oklahoma City bombing, Susan Urbach.
And one of the things Susan has said
is that there comes a time
when you need to stop.
To accept the verdicts of the justice system,
to move on with life.
Because otherwise
you get stuck.

And it's hard to find grace,
it's hard to find hope,
when you are stuck.
The scars will remain,
but life can
begin again.

***
None of us
is perfect.
We all make decisions
which are less than good.
We all
get tangled up in evil - as both victims
and perpetrators.
It's mostly small stuff
but sometimes bigger things too.
We can't escape
the consequences.
But God is waiting
for us,
for us who are guilty, waiting for the first hint of repentance
to offer us
the freedom of forgiveness, God is waiting
for us who are innocent, waiting with open arms
to enfold us with grace.
And that grace
can enable us, empower us
to move on, innocent
and guilty
alike.
To begin life anew.

As Jesus said to the woman in our gospel reading,
"Your sins are forgiven; your faith has saved you.
Go in peace."

Amen.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
17 June 2001